North Star Framework
One metric that captures your product's value delivery
The North Star Framework centres a product team around a single North Star Metric (NSM) — the one metric that best captures the core value the product delivers to customers. The NSM sits between revenue (the business outcome) and usage (the product output) and predicts long-term growth. Input metrics are the key drivers that move the NSM, giving teams a causal model of their product's growth engine.
The North Star Metric concept gained prominence through Sean Ellis (who coined 'growth hacking') and was systematised into the North Star Framework by Amplitude and John Cutler around 2017–2018. The framework builds on Andy Johns' growth work at Facebook, Twitter, and Wealthfront.
Use North Star Framework when
- ✓Teams lacking alignment on what "success" means beyond revenue
- ✓Organisations wanting to shift from output metrics (features shipped) to outcome metrics (value delivered)
- ✓Growth-stage companies building their first structured growth model
- ✓PMs wanting to create a causal model connecting their roadmap to long-term business outcomes
Avoid it when
- ✗Very early-stage products where the value hypothesis is still being tested — define the NSM after product-market fit
- ✗Organisations with multiple distinct business lines that require different NSMs
- ✗Teams that will game the NSM rather than use it as a learning tool
Key Concepts
The single metric that best captures the value your product delivers to customers. It should predict revenue and be influenced by product decisions.
The 3–5 leading indicators that drive the North Star Metric. These are what teams directly influence with their work.
The specific initiatives and experiments that move each input metric.
How many users are engaging with the core product value. One of the four key dimensions of an NSM.
How deeply users are engaging with the core value. High depth = strong product-market fit.
How often users return to experience the core value. High frequency = habitual use.
How it works
Identify the metric that best captures core value delivery: is it breadth, depth, frequency, or efficiency? It should be measurable, predictive of revenue, and influenced by the product team.
Decompose the NSM into 3–5 leading indicators. These become the KPIs for individual product teams.
Map current initiatives to input metrics. Identify gaps where no work is addressing a key input.
Review NSM and input metrics weekly. Surface disconnects between team work and metric movement. Adjust work streams accordingly.
Tools that support North Star Framework
Industry standard for software development teams — most PMs will encounter Jira in their career
Exceptionally intuitive and visually clean interface — one of the lowest onboarding friction tools for non-technical teams
Highly visual and intuitive interface with color-coded boards — one of the easiest PM tools for non-technical teams to adopt
All-in-one platform replacing multiple tools — docs, whiteboards, goals, time tracking, chat, and project management in a single workspace
Unmatched flexibility as an all-in-one workspace — combines docs, wikis, databases, and project management in a single tool
Spreadsheet-familiar interface makes adoption easy for teams transitioning from Excel — minimal training needed for basic use
Extremely intuitive drag-and-drop Kanban interface — virtually zero learning curve, new users productive within minutes
De facto standard for workplace communication — most PMs will use Slack daily, and it appears constantly in job descriptions
Frequently Asked Questions
Slack: daily active users sending messages. Airbnb: nights booked. Spotify: time spent listening. Facebook (early): daily active users. Amplitude: weekly querying users. The best NSMs capture the core value exchange: users doing the thing that proves they got value.
The framework argues for one — having two creates competing priorities. If you genuinely have two distinct user groups with different value propositions (e.g. a marketplace), you may need one NSM per side of the market. But multiple NSMs for a single product usually indicate confusion about what the product is for.
KPIs are any key metrics. The North Star Metric is specifically the one that captures your product's core value delivery and sits causally between usage and revenue. An NSM should be something that, if it goes up, you're confident your product is genuinely delivering more value — not a metric that can be gamed by low-quality usage.